Deathworld

by Tom Clancy

  “And Jeannie hated drugs more than anything,” Khasm said. “Her dad died of an overdose a few years ago. She’d never have done drugs, no matter how depressed she was!”

  “Uh,” Nick said. He was a little shocked to find himself edging away from them both. “Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

  They looked at him in some shock themselves. Then Khasm sagged. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. It’s just that-you know how it is, everybody here we knew has beengoing around not asking the question-but you know they’re thinking about it-and then when somebody does actually ask it-”

  “It’s okay,” Nick said. “… Look, I can take you to where that ‘lift’ is.”

  “That’d be nice of you,” Khasm said, sounding subdued.

  “Yeah,” said Spile. “Once we’ve got it … we can get out of here… .”

  They stood up. “Down this way,” Nick said, and started retracing his steps through the low dark corridors, with the other two behind him.

  Neither of them said much for a while. After some minutes Khasm said, “The last time I saw her … it was a couple of weeks ago, with Mal and Bitsy and a few other friends. Down here. They loved this place.” She sniffed once, softly, like someone trying to hide it. “She and Mal would come down here and hang out with the rest of us when things weren’t going right … when we couldn’t hang out together elsewhere.”

  Nick thought for a moment about the best way to phrase this. “Was there some kind of problem?”

  “Oh, yeah, Jeannie and Mal had a thing going … and her mom didn’t approve. Neither did his folks. They all thought they were too young to be thinking about marriage.” Another sniff. “Both of them were angry about that, yeah, and a little depressed … but not that depressed. They were going to wait their parents out for a couple of years, let them get used to the idea. Jeannie told me so. And she told me that Mal agreed.”

  Nick paused at a corner, trying to remember which way he was headed. There was something niggling at him, and he felt he had to ask. He turned to Khasm. “Look, uh …” There was no kindly way to ask. He gave up trying. “You’re saying she didn’t ever mention suicide … ?”

  “Exactly once in all the time I knew her,” said Khasm, and somewhat to Nick’s surprise, she didn’t sound angry this time, just tired. “What normal person doesn’t think about it every now and then? It would be sick not to admit that it happens. And dumb, when life gets nasty, not to admit that it wouldn’t be nice if all the pain just stopped!

  But not that way. She never talked about it to do it. You know what I mean?”

  Nick thought of that sudden rush of make-it-stop that he’d had the other day. Yet at the same time he hadn’t had the slightest intention of taking the thought through to its logical conclusion.

  “That was why the drug thing was so awful,” Spile said as they turned a sharp corner, left, then right again. “But at least it didn’t make the news… .”

  Nick thought about that. Somehow it didn’t seem either accidental to him, or an act of kindness. The newspeople were notorious for publishing anything they could get their hands on, the more scandalous the better. I wonder … is that something the cops are keeping secret?

  But why?

  It was weirding him out. Nick saw as much pain and death and unhappiness on the Net news as anyone else did, but coming up against it in terms of real people, real lives, was something else again. And there was something else going on inside him, too. His dad was a Netcam man, one of the best. That was why he kept getting sent all over the place, why they had had to keep moving around so much when Nick was younger. Reporters fought to be assigned with his father, for he had (one of them had said once, in Nick’s hearing) “a gift for finding trouble and following up on it.” Now, unnerved, Nick was beginning to wonder whether that gift was starting to reveal itself in the next generation.

  “Here,” he said, and turned the last corner. Fortunately the corridors hadn’t been doing anything unusual. Right up until now everything had been where it was supposed to be, and now the wall at the far end of what otherwise looked like a featureless dead end was exactly where Nick had left it. “Your account open?”

  “Yeah,” Khasm said. Nick went down to that blank wall, bent close to it. The light wasn’t great down here, and he had only found this lift’s hiding place because of a stubborn tendency to touch everything. “Here,” he said, getting down on one knee. “See that kind of dimple there? It just caught my eye. It doesn’t belong… .”

  “Yeah,” Khasm said again. She leaned down to touch it.

  The rock in front of them seemed to tear itself open. A moment later they were all looking at what Nick had found earlier: a small chest carved of what appeared to be a single emerald. Down in the bottom of it was what Nick had found there before, when he opened it himself: a single eighth note, glowing gold.

  Khasm looked at it for a long moment before she reached in and touched it. The air filled with the sound of Camiun’s strings being plucked slowly, one after another, more as their own small soft poem on the air rather than any accompaniment, and then came Joey Bane’s voice, sorrowful and low:

  “I never went the way you told me to, I argued every word you said.

  I never thought the way you would have liked, I never walked the way you led.

  And now he’s gone with you where I would not, There in the dark he holds your hand;

  And how I simply let you go to be with him I’ll never understand.

  So now I have them all to myself, at last, All my sorry, empty days, And now I walk alone and self-sufficient Down the narrow ways… .

  Nick stayed where he was, didn’t move, as Khasm and Spile held still and listened to the second verse of the song. Finally the last few notes faded away, and Khasm lifted the eighth note out of the casket and closed her hand around it. When she opened her hand again, the note was gone.

  She stood up and sighed, and sniffled again, and for a few moments she wouldn’t say anything. “When they release the body and let her mom bury her,” Khasm said at last, “I’ll play it at the grave for her … after the funeral, when things quiet down.”

  They went out into the corridor. Nick, following her and Spite, was finding it hard to understand how he felt. Spite was a silent lowering presence in this darkness, but there was no feeling of threat about him, only pain, and Khasm, her eyes downcast, seemed to have gotten control of herself again, but that was even worse for Nick, in a way, than the sound of her fighting with her tears had been.

  “Look,” he said. “If there’s anything else I can do-”

  Khasm shook her head. “This,” she said, holding up the closed hand that no longer had an eighth note in it, “this meant a lot. Uh … thanks.”

  She went off down the corridor, and Spile started to go after her. Nick astonished himself by putting a hand on that huge arm. Spile stopped and stared at him.

  “I mean it,” he said.

  Spite looked at him in a kind of lowering silence, then said, “Yeah. Thanks. I-”

  “Nick Melchior,” Nick said. “I’m in the login lists.”

  “Okay,” said Spite. “I- Maybe we’ll get in touch.”

  He went after Khasm. Nick stood there, watching them go, and then headed out into the corridor himself, in the opposite direction, slowly making his way back toward where he had been when they’d found him.

  It had never occurred to him that there might have been something odd about those suicides. But Khasm and Spite had been absolutely certain. And now Nick found himself remembering that Charlie had been a little concerned about Deathworld, himself, and all the time Nick was spending there.

  Was he thinking about the suicides, too?

  There was no telling. But he had certainly mentioned them once … and Nick had brushed him off. And then Charlie had asked him for that walk-through.

  Nick had been delighted about this earlier: the idea of ranging around Deathworld with Charlie in tow would have been fun. Part of th
at was that Charlie was so smart about a lot of stuff. Nick didn’t grudge him that. His buddy had been through hell in his time, a real hell as opposed to this rather entertaining fake one. But this would have been one place where, for once, Nick was just a little smarter than Charlie … and he didn’t think Charlie would grudge him that, either.

  Now, though, the concept had acquired an entirely different slant, and Nick wasn’t sure he liked it at all. There was something about these suicides and Deathworld that was bothering him, all of a sudden … something fishy. And now Charlie was going to be wandering around down there, new to the place, not knowing the ropes. Anybody could come along and tell him anything … possibly get him in some kind of trouble.

  Oh, come on, said the “sensible” part of Nick’s brain. It’s not like the environment’s dangerous, or anything. If it were, Net Force would come in and shut it down. And Charlie’s not dumb! Far from it.

  But all the same … these suicides… .

  All of a sudden they gave him the creeps.

  I’ve got to go see Charlie, he thought. As soon as I finish here today… .

  Nick headed off into the darkness.

  Charlie had been up late again, the night before, sitting sideways on the lowest of the benches in his workspace with his feet up, studying the Deathworld walkthrough. It was complex, but not as bad as some environments he’d played in at one time or another. A lot of the business of getting through the upper circles seemed to involve talking to the Damned. That, by itself, was interesting for Charlie. Later on, once you got down to Eight, it started to be about talking to other gameplayers. It’s as if the game designers are trying to teach people to talk to each other, Charlie thought. Easing them into it gradually. It starts out as sort of an entertainment, ‘look at all the bad people getting what’s coming to them. _ . . ‘ Then it changes focus.

  Charlie wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. Is this the work of some benign behind-the-scenes environment designer? Or could this be something that Bane wanted put in?

  He paused for a little while to scan through the various virtclips and text interviews with Bane that he had gathered together. In none of them did Joey Bane say much about his actual input into the environment’s design. If anything, he seemed to avoid the topic, or to try to suggest (in one or two of the interviews) that he was a nontechie who didn’t know much about computers or the Net.

  That Charlie found hard to believe, especially in the light of the way the professional music business was these days. It had become inextricably interwoven with the Net in terms of music distribution and marketing over the last twenty years, and if there was anything Charlie was certain of as far as Joey Bane was concerned, it was that the man was expert, even inspired, in terms of marketing. He suspected that Bane was as involved in this as in anything else to which his name might be attached. But proving

  Then again, there wasn’t any reason to worry much about that right now. The environment itself was going to present its own challenges. Because after Eight, after you find the way into the Maze and down into the Ninth level . _ . no details. Even the walk-throughs, which were theoretically slightly illegal and usually went out of their way to reveal such details, suddenly went dry. It’s as if it all stops there … or some really powerful influence is keeping people from discussing what they find there. Weird.

  The threat of lawsuits, maybe?

  But then you would think that was enough to keep people from talking about the first eight levels, too. And it’s not.

  Charlie brooded over that for a while. What influence was powerful enough to keep something so secret?

  If I get down there, I may find out.

  Meanwhile- He swung up and walked around his little gallery of exhibits again. Charlie had folded away all the autopsy results, and now was left with the kids themselves, sitting on front steps, lying on beaches, hitting a softball again and again … Jaime and Richard. Jeannine and Malcolm. Renee and Mitch. They could have been anybody from Bradford, Charlie thought. Or from any school around here. They look perfectly normal. Except that they had all committed suicide. That was the problem, of course. A suicide looks like anybody else, until the crucial moment hits during which taking one more breath becomes just too painful.

  And then there are cases like these, Charlie thought, when there’s something else going on .

  … and only one way to find out what.

  He sighed, glancing up at the windows. It was fully dark in London now, but it was still afternoon on the East Coast. He and headed off toward the doorway that led to Mark Gridley’s workspace, opened it, and put his head through.

  The heat and humidity hit him like a blow. Well, it’s Florida, isn’t it, Charlie thought, and stepped into the hot sunlight and close still air inside the VAB. But you can have a little too much reality. Mark can be such a perfectionist sometimes… “Mark,” Charlie shouted as he walked across the concrete, “you in here?”

  “Yeah,” Mark said, from somewhere right across that huge space, though out of sight. “Be with you in a minute.”

  Charlie made his way across to where the hardwood desk had been sitting last time. It was gone. There was one of the new Rolls-Skoda cars there, the sleek new armored number that everyone was talking about. Its hood was up, and Mark was peering in at the engine.

  Charlie came up beside him after a couple of minutes and looked in, too. The engine was clean enough to eat off, a complex welter of shining tubes and piping and a massive engine block which had probably been carved in one piece out of a solid cube of steel. “Considering a purchase?” Charlie said. “Or is your dad worried about somebody’s security?”

  “Huh?” Mark straightened up, dusted his hands off. “No, it’s just a sim,” he said. “Somebody I know let me borrow it. They’re having trouble with the way it runs. Keeps going nonphysical at bad moments.”

  Charlie thought rather ruefully of his steam engine. “I’ve been having spong troubles myself,” he said. “But that’s not what I came over for.”

  “So tell me.” Mark put the Rolls’s hood down and boosted himself up to sit on it. “And what happened with all those files?”

  “A lot,” Charlie said. “But, Mark, would you for cripesake turn on the air-conditioning? It’s like a sauna in here.”

  “Nope,” Mark said. “I’m waiting for something.” He glanced up. Charlie followed his glance, but didn’t see anything but the pygmy buzzards, way up high by the huge slot in the ceiling, circling near it. “So tell me what’s up.”

  Charlie shook his head in mild exasperation, but went ahead to briefly describe what he had found in going through the autopsy files. “There’s something going on about all these deaths that just doesn’t feel right,” he said. “And there’s no way to look into it except from the inside.”

  Mark gave him a thoughtful look. “Looking into death from the inside,” he said, “would seem to preclude you doing much of anything else.”

  “Not that far inside,” Charlie said, with only a little annoyance. “Mark, I need you to wire me.”

  Charlie had expected to have to explain to Mark what he meant. To his surprise, he didn’t. But he was also surprised to see Mark sit down on one of his folding chairs and blow out his cheeks like someone with a big problem. “Don’t need much, do you,” Mark said.

  “You can do it, can’t you?” Charlie said.

  “Will I do it? Yeah, you know I’ll do whatever you need done. Is it going to be easy? No, not like raiding those systems the other night.”

  Mark pulled his feet up under him to sit cross-legged on the Rolls’s hood. “That was stealing-from-the-cookiejar stuff compared to this,” he said. “Deathworld’s probably got more copy protection schemes built into it than any environment I can think of. Bane’s really sensitive to having his stuff ripped off … and half his technical staff keep busy inventing new and interesting ways to stop people from piping information directly out. A whole lot of stuff to have to defeat, second by second. And
naturally you don’t want anybody noticing what you’re doing.”

  “Uh, no.”

  Mark sat there and brooded for a little. “By the way, what happened to your fishing trip?” Charlie said after a moment. “I didn’t think I’d find you here.”

  Mark snickered. “Oh, I would have won. Dad has to stay home and do some classified thing.” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s just as well. He’ll be out of my way for the rest of the weekend, and maybe longer … which is going to be good, since this is gonna need a lot of concentration… .”

  The two of them sat there quietly for a few moments more. Then Mark said, “Talk to me later tonight. I’ll let you know if it can be done.”

  “Okay,” Charlie said, getting up. “Mark-thanks.” “Yeah, yeah …” But then Mark looked up, blinking. “You hear something?”

  Charlie looked around. “Uh, no.”

  “I did, though-” Mark slid down off the hood of the Rolls, and looked up. “Hey …”

  Charlie followed his glance. The buzzards were suddenly crowding off to one side of the VAB’s upper reaches, and all looking hurriedly for high spots on which to perch, as if on the top of a cliff. Charlie looked up and saw …

  He opened his mouth, then closed it again, for he didn’t know how to describe what he was seeing. His first thought was The air is thickening. The idea seemed silly. But that was exactly what it was doing-thickening, like steam, like a thick fog, thicker, like smoke-though through it the sun poured from above, untroubled. Charlie shook his head, astounded. Clouds were forming above them, right there inside the VAB, and as Charlie watched, what looked like a thin silvery smoke seemed to start drifting down from them. He walked out into the middle of that space, not hurrying too much, for that silvery drift was taking a little time to come down, and finally he stopped, with Mark behind him, and felt, on his upturned face, the first fine drops of rain.

  “Will you look at that,” Mark said, triumphant. “It does this sometimes, the real one. I knew that if I’d really got this simulation down right, sooner or later it would happen.” He pounded Charlie on the back and laughed. “Congratulations, Charlie, you’ve witnessed history!”